George Stroumboulopoulos: Rebel with a cause

From sporting a life-sized lizard suit to interviewing Bono for MuchMusic, it’s safe to say that George Stroumboulopoulos has come a long way over the course of his 20-year career.

Now hosting and producing an award-winning TV show, George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (formerly known as The Hour), currently in its ninth season on CBC, Canada’s self-proclaimed boyfriend admits: “I still have no idea what I’m doing.”

“When you’re professionally ‘you’ for a living, you don’t know what you do,” Stroumboulopoulos, 40, says during an interview with The Uniter while in Winnipeg for a speaking engagement at the University of Manitoba in early February.

“Somehow this career happened. I don’t know how - ... this wasn’t part of the plan.”

Strombo studied radio broadcasting at Humber College in Toronto in the early ’90s.

His first gig was an internship at rock radio station 104.7 The Lizard in Kelowna, B.C., where he hosted a metal show and dressed up as the station’s mascot.

“When you’re super drunk and fucked up in a lizard costume at 4 a.m. in B.C. ... I’d like to think that was the peak of my career,” he says with a laugh.

“I really only wanted to get into radio, I never really thought about journalism or television. I obviously consumed lots of it as a kid - read a lot of newspapers, watched the news all the time. I always wanted to be smarter than I was and I wanted to be more informed than I was.”

When MuchMusic came knocking, Strombo was wary of making the leap to television.

“I never had cable and I didn’t grow up watching MuchMusic. When they came and offered me a job at The NewMusic, it was a show that I had watched - (a show) where they interviewed bands like The Clash, Jesus and Mary Chain and Grandmaster Flash. They brought hip hop and metal to us, and so I thought I would go and do that.”

Over the course of five years as a Much VJ, Strombo interviewed all the big names, from Britney Spears to Bono - the latter of which he deems one of his best interviews of all time.

Since leaving Much in 2004 for his current gig, the Torontonian has become a CBC staple, whose long-time Sunday night radio program, The Strombo Show, is also broadcast on CBC 2.

Having spoken with everyone from Al Gore to Margaret Atwood, Strombo comes across as genuinely interested and knowledgeable during every interview.

“The art to interviews is not in the questions, but in the follow-up questions. I just present it, let them start the ball rolling and then start digging,” he says.

Exuding as much charisma in person as he does on air, Strombo enthusiastically riffs on different topics - his shameless affection for Coldplay and the movie Love Actually, his choices to be both vegan and straight-edge, and his ultimate passion: motorcycle racing.

Strombo says his only fear is inauthenticity, and, in the spirit of keeping things real, he kept his lofty last name as part of his public alias.
“I refused to change my name because some WASPy person says, ‘Stroumboulopoulos is too ethnic.’ I reject that. What I didn’t realize is it’s important to keep an ethnic name, not for you, but for what it means to other people,” he says.

“It’s important for people that come to this country to see a name that isn’t typical. Because we’re ethnic, man. And being Toronto ethnic is even more ethnic than ethnic.”

Naturally, Strombo has some tips for aspiring broadcast journalists.

“Be patient and be smart. The younger generation hasn’t really figured out how to figure things out yet. You guys only know how to search things; you’re a Google generation. You have to really work on your critical thinking, your analysis and your ability to figure things out - be it a story, an angle, a moment - those things really are the art of this.”

While he’s an avid mentor to the student body at his alma mater, Strombo also acknowledges the fact that he’s constantly learning with every day on the job.

“I’m never satisfied with a show because the show to me is craft, and craft is not a stagnant thing. I like elements of it, and then there are other elements I want to change.”

Still, Strombo has never taken life too seriously, a mark he attributes to his upbringing.

“I was very lucky that my mother never raised me with expectations; it’s very liberating.

My family’s dream for me was to be a bus driver,” he says.

“Kids today try to prove themselves, (but) you have to let yourself off the hook. You got out of bed today? You win.”

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info A quickie with George Stroumboulopoulos

The second portion of a two-part interview with the Canadian media icon

In earlier seasons of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (or The Hour), a segment called “2:20” saw Strombo ask guests 20 questions within 2 minutes. The Uniter used this format and asked Strombo 20 questions, rapid-fire.

Uniter: What is the truest Canadian stereotype?

Strombo: Passive.

U: What’s your favourite news source?

S: Reuters.

U: If you were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one thing with you (that wasn’t a communications device), what would you bring?

S: I’d bring a dirt-bike.

U: Montreal Canadiens or Winnipeg Jets?

S: Oh god, come on! Habs. The Calgary Flames, Bruins, other teams have given me jerseys as a gift with my name on it - I won’t even put them on. Even friends of mine that play on other teams (like the Leafs), I’m not putting them on.

U: What’s the best interview you’ve ever done?

S: I had a really great interview with Bono and it was a big moment for me and for what I did at MuchMusic.

U: What’s the worst interview?

S: Oh so many. Too many to name.

U: First CD you ever bought?

S: First record I ever bought was Black Sabbath Paranoid. First tape I ever bought was Def Leppard’s Pyromania. First CD I ever bought was Public Enemy’s The Enemy Strikes Black.

U: What was your first impression of Oprah?

S: Epic.

U: Your best college memory?

S: Oh god, I don’t remember much. I was so drunk for most of it, I really was. My best college memory was going into CKAD, which was this college radio station that the transmitter only let them broadcast to the parking lot. Being on the air and doing my first radio shifts overnight, those were my favourite memories.

U: Who is your favourite Winnipegger?

S: I don’t know that he’s a Winnipegger anymore because he was a “Regina-an” ultimately, but Tommy Douglas would be a favourite Winnipegger for me. Tommy Douglas had a real turning point moment in his life at the Winnipeg General Strike in the early part of the century, and so that would be my favourite, even though he’s technically a “Saskatchewan-ite”.

U: If you knew the world were to end at midnight tonight, what would you do before it ends?

S: I would get myself to an ocean. I would go inside and I would just sit in the Pacific Ocean somewhere in Southern California, and I would float on my back in the water and watch the whole thing crumble.

U: Whom can you impersonate best?

S: I can’t impersonate anybody. No, I wish I could, and if I could it would probably be so offensive I wouldn’t do it in front of you.U: What are your first impressions of Winnipeg?

S: My first impressions of Winnipeg are isolated, for better or for worse. Isolated, but no chip on its shoulder, in the way that other cities in the West do, and I like that. The arts scene is its own. Wait, you know who my favourite Winnipegger is? It’s a band, Propaghandi. They’re my favourite Winnipeggers.

U: What’s your go-to karaoke song?

S: I like to do No Diggity by Blackstreet.

U: What’s one thing you wish people would pay more attention to?

S: The moment.

U: Your favourite movie of all time?

S: It’s either The Blues Brothers or Apocalypse Now for sure.

U: Whom do you idolize?

S: I don’t think I idolize anyone. Maybe the melodies in a U2 song? I idolize the melody in a U2 song and I idolize the lyrics of Gord Downie.

U: Whom do you still want to interview that you haven’t had the chance to talk to yet?

S: Patti Smith, and I am going to interview her in a month. Neil Young and Tom Waits would be nice.

U: What’s the best advice you were ever given?

S: It was two-part advice: a) never talk down to your audience, and b) fuck ‘em if they don’t get it. I learned it early and it’s like listen, I will never spoon-feed you. I will meet you halfway, and you can come find me the other halfway. This is not about me placating anybody.

U: What question have you always wanted to ask somebody, but never did?

S: I don’t think such a question exists. I mean there are lots of questions that I wanted to ask, but I just forgot to ask. I’m very respectful when I do interviews with people who have strong religious conviction. But sometimes, when you start drilling into an interview with someone who is really religious, you can only drill so deep. If their answer always goes back to, “Well it’s in the Bible!”- I find that to be the greatest cop-out answer of all time. It’s not that I don’t have the guts to ask, but it’s just if I keep pushing and pushing and pushing, then it’s like kicking a puppy in a barrel, covered in gasoline. Why?